Allophonic variation

FINAL PROJECT

In this project, we will discuss two different allophonic variations, the glottal stop

and the aspiration of voiceless stops in English. First of all, we are going to define the

important words. An allophone is a variation of a phoneme, it’s not a different sound. In this

category of allophonic variation appears the glottal stop and the aspiration.

The glottal stop is a “stop sound” caused by the glottis which is closing and which is

stopping the vibration of the vocal cords. In this case, the glottal stop appears at the

beginning of a word which have a vowel in the initial position.

An aspiration is a puff of air happening after a consonant. The vocal chords take

more time to close up in order to emit the vowel, the breath accompanies the plosive’s

release. Sometimes, an aspirated plosive is followed by an approximant which will become

voiceless because it has coincided with the plosive’s release. There is no aspiration in

French.

Glottal stops and aspirations are made frequently in English, although we rarely

notice them as English learners because they do not make a difference in the meaning of

English words but with a software called PRAAT, we can properly see them. PRAAT is a

software for the scientific analysis of a speech in phonetics. In this software there are

options like formants, pitch or intensity that we can see it through a spectrogram.

For this project, there are 3 recordings from native French speakers reading a list of

words with two different spelling, basically, one which has an allophonic variation and the

other one don’t. We will examine them (with PRAAT) and discuss whether the speakers

produce aspiration or a glottal stop where they would be expected.

Now, let’s see how a glottal stop and an aspiration normally look like in PRAAT.

Here, is the example of “team at” (glottal stop) compared to “tea mat” (no glottal stop) and

“a top” (aspiration) compared to “stop” (no aspiration) :

They both have exactly the same phonetic transcription, but in PRAAT, for “team at” we can

see a large white band, this is the glottal stop.

For “a top”, we notice a white band followed by a dark thin band and by formants. They

represent the release of <t>.

release

aspiration

closure

This is the representation of an aspiration how it looks like in PRAAT.

ELSA BOUVET and VALENTINA KOUTSENKO

a. “team at” (glottal stop) (the green line, is the place of the glottal stop)

b. “tea mat” (no glottal stop)

c. “a top” (aspiration)

d. “a stop” (no aspiration)

ELSA BOUVET and VALENTINA KOUTSENKO

RESULTS :

Then, we are going to see if the 3 native French speakers (a/b/c) produced the glottal stop in

the words that should have it :

And now, we are going to see if the 3 native French speakers (a/b/c) produced the

aspiration in the words that should have it. Indeed, the aspiration should be in the

following words:

“lace table”: release of <t> (aspiration VsC)

“cook’s truck”: release of <t> (aspiration CsCC)

“keeps talking”: release of <t> (aspiration CsC)

“lie cold”: release of /k/ (double cue)

“keeps canning”: release of /k/ (aspiration CsC)

lace table cook’s truck keeps talking lie cold « keeps

canning »

speaker A No aspiration No aspiration No aspiration Aspiration No aspiration

speaker B Aspiration No aspiration No aspiration Aspiration No aspiration

speaker C Aspiration No aspiration no aspiration No aspiration No aspiration

an ice man I’ll earn wife ill seal of like old seem able

speaker A no glottal

stop

glottal stop glottal stop glottal stop glottal stop no glottal

stop

speaker B no glottal

stop

glottal stop no glottal

stop

glottal stop glottal stop no glottal

stop

speaker C no glottal

stop

glottal stop glottal stop glottal stop

...